CIA report claims reprehensible actions in Korean war

Published: Tuesday, April 04, 2000

WASHINGTON {AP} The CIA lost so many Korean agents in futile attempts to operate behind enemy lines during the Korean War that the agency later privately judged its use of American-trained loyalists as "morally reprehensible," declassified records show.

This frank judgment is significant not only for the internal angst it exposes but also because the Central Intelligence Agency had never before publicly acknowledged the scope or the outcome of its covert operations during the war.

The records show the CIA sent untold numbers of agents in the thousands, judging from the censored documents into North Korea during the 1950-53 war. Their missions ranged from intelligence collection to establishing "escape and evasion," or E&E, networks to rescue downed U.S. pilots.

"E&E operations as conducted by CIA in Korea were not only ineffective but probably morally reprehensible in that the number of lives lost and the amount of time and treasure expended was enormously disproportionate to attainments therefrom," a July 1973 CIA historical review said, quoting from a January 1954 report by the Korea Branch chief at CIA headquarters.

Early in the war, CIA espionage efforts scored some notable successes, but most of its efforts at penetrating North Korea once peace talks began in the summer of 1951 failed, the records show.

Portions of the secret 1973 review and other CIA records were declassified at the request of a private author, Michael E. Haas. The CIA provided The Associated Press with copies of the declassified pages after the AP inquired about the disclosures.

Some of the CIA's agents were South Koreans allied with U.S. forces. Others were anti-communist North Koreans forced to flee when China entered the war in October 1950 and drove American and allied troops back across the 38th parallel, which was and remains a dividing line between the two Koreas.

Haas, a retired Air Force colonel and decorated Vietnam veteran, used the 1973 report and other declassified CIA records in writing "In the Devil's Shadow," published in March by the Naval Institute Press.